It was while she was looking for a cattery for the family cat – an “incredibly common little rescue cat called Norman” – that Abi Purser first spotted a gap in the market. She was going on holiday with her family, but none of the catteries she visited seemed up to scratch. “I felt like I was in a Tardis – as if I’d been transported back 50 years,” she says.

Purser, who’d recently left her job working for the British equestrian Olympic team to have a baby, thought nothing of it for a few months. But when she started looking around for something to do, her mother suggested that she could use her own home to open a cattery that was a cut above the ones she’d seen.

And so, in 2010, the first Longcroft Luxury Cat Hotel was born. “We were lucky we’d just bought a new house to accommodate our new baby, so the garden was bigger, and our vegetable patch got culled for a cat hotel,” says Purser. It wasn’t a big sacrifice: “I don’t like growing my own veg anyway.”

It took 18 months to receive planning permission – the council in Welwyn Garden City, where Purser lives, was understandably worried about potential noise and smell – then a combination of money borrowed from her mother and cash raised from selling household items on eBay to fund construction of the exclusive six-bed cattery. Time spent working with horses had taught Purser a lot about animal welfare. She decided the cattery wouldn’t use timber – it retains the smell of other cats – and that each cat would have a wrought-iron bed in its individually decorated bedroom suite. There would be gourmet menus and a choice of music, and Abi and other staff members would spend time every day with each cat.

“I opened in June and by Christmas we had 300 people who wanted us to look after their cats,” she says.

The key to her approach is “meticulous attention to detail”. Every aspect of the cattery is researched so that the cats’ experience is as good as it can possibly be, even down to the cat litter – Purser worked with a partner to develop a product that wouldn’t stick to the cats’ paws.

The Welwyn Garden City cattery was so successful that Purser developed a franchise. There are now 10 Longcroft luxury cat hotels, with plans to build another two before Christmas, and another 15 in the pipeline for next year. She thinks there’s room for up to 200 Longcroft luxury cat hotels in the UK, and she hopes to expand into the Middle East in 2016. There are also plans for a “cheeky little brand” that will go on sale in the cat hotels, and possibly in a supermarket.

As a home business, it’s been perfect. Purser is able to work part-time, which means she also has plenty of time to spend with her two young children. She loves the fact she can make a good living without a long commute and a huge bill for childcare. She’s still amazed at the speed with which the business idea took hold and flourished. “It’s just astounding what’s happened in five years,” she says.

Longcroft Luxury Cat Hotel was shortlisted in the Small Business Showcase competition’s Home Business Innovation category. Find out more about the competition here

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